Ride the Free Wind

by Rosanne Bittner

  Ride the Free Wind

  Book Two of the Savage Destiny Series

  Rosanne Bittner

  Copyright © 1984 by Rosanne Bittner. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc.; the agency can be reached at dca@doncongdon.com.

  Cover design by Kim Killion of The Killion Group

  Throughout this novel the reader will find references to Utah Territory, Nebraska Territory, New Mexico Territory, and Kansas Territory. Portions of these territories comprised what is now Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. So that the reader understands specific locations, the major part of this novel is centered in present-day Colorado. The Arkansas River, around which lies the major territory of the Southern Cheyenne, is located in southeastern Colorado. Fort Laramie is located in southeastern Wyoming; the place of the “warm, bubbling waters” is in what is now Yellowstone Park; and the meeting place of the Cheyenne and Sioux for the Sun Dance Ritual is in the southwest corner of South Dakota.

  … Don’t make me leave you, for I want to go wherever you go, and to live wherever you live; your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God; I want to die where you die, and be buried there.…”

  Ruth 1:16-17

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  One

  Thunder rumbled through the great peaks of the Rockies in one continuous, echoing boom, reverberating from peak to valley to peak and making the whole earth seem to shake. Black clouds rolled over one snow-capped spire, threatening everything below with a drenching spring storm. But Abbie was not afraid. In her brief sixteen years of life she had always hated storms, and in the mountains they were so much more frightening. But she was with Zeke, and when a woman was with Cheyenne Zeke, she was never afraid, not even of the elements.

  The two of them guided their horses through a narrow, rocky ridge, both astride sturdy Appaloosas, the animals’ brown coats spotted with white helping to hide their riders from whatever foe might lurk nearby. In the myriad of rocks and crevices around them, an enemy could easily hide, and in this year of 1846, a time when there were dangers of all varieties in this untamed land, one had to be very cautious and alert.

  Abbie studied the broad shoulders of her husband as he rode ahead of her, the fringes of his buckskins swaying with the motion of his supple body. He was an experienced man of the mountains, bedecked with an array of weapons, all of which he could use skillfully to defend her if the need arose. A quiver of Cheyenne arrows was slung across his back with a bow, and he wore a handgun at his side. A Spencer carbine rested in its case attached to the gear on his horse. But the weapon Cheyenne Zeke’s enemies feared most of all was the knife he carried on his wide, leather weapons belt around his slim waist.

  The knife’s rawhide, beaded sheath was bright and colorful, with blue and red beads in the design of eagles. The handle of the knife that protruded above this sheath was made from the jawbone of a buffalo and wrapped with buffalo hide. But the razor-sharp blade, set into the jawbone handle with cast lead, was the source of Cheyenne Zeke’s infamous reputation. The tip of the blade was slightly curved and could rip through animal—or man—in the blink of an eye, bringing instant death.

  It was a big knife—fifteen inches from the buffalo tooth at the top end of the handle to the tip of the blade. And it belonged to a big man, who could throw it faster than a sharpshooter could draw a gun. Abbie had seen him use the knife, and that was something a person did not forget. Anyone who knew Zeke’s reputation with the knife thought twice about doing battle with the tall, dark-skinned half-breed and usually decided against a confrontation. Those who chose a less wise decision did not live to tell about it.

  His array of weapons was a stark contrast to the musical instrument he carried with his gear—a mandolin, which he played with as much skill as he used his weapons. The gentle music he made with the mandolin and his own smooth voice hardly fit the hardened, fighting man that was his primary personality. But he was only hard because life had made him that way; and he had taught himself to play the instrument back in Tennessee, where he’d often walked alone in the hills in which he’d found peace in his growing-up years. Sadly, as he grew older, the weapons were used much more often than the mandolin, but he still played and sang—for his Abbie.

  Abbie smiled, a pleasant, warm sensation pulsing through her at the thought of being Zeke’s woman. They had met in the summer of 1845, when he’d scouted for the wagon train with which Abbie and her family were traveling to Oregon. On that fateful journey, she’d lost her family, but she had come to know and love the half-breed, Zeke Monroe. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have wanted to live at all in those first terrible days of being alone. Only the warm love and sweet passion she had felt for Cheyenne Zeke kept her going, and when their bodies finally came together in a night of terrible need and desperation, she’d understood why, of her family, she alone had survived. She was to be Cheyenne Zeke’s woman, and there was no stopping that.

  They were married late that summer at Fort Bridger. It had been an unlikely match, she being white and Zeke a half-breed. There would be many who would scorn such a relationship. But that didn’t matter. Abbie knew in her bones it was a good match, a perfect match. Zeke had been her first man, and there would not be another in the life of Abigail Trent Monroe. He was her destiny.

  “We’d best find a cave for shelter,” Zeke spoke up without turning around. He didn’t have to turn for her to know every feature of his finely chiseled face with the hard lines etched deeply from his life of torture and hardship—too deeply for a man only twenty-six years old. And there was the scar—a fine, white line that ran down the left side of his face—put there by an enemy Crow Indian, who’d died by Zeke’s blade. But the scar and the lines of life did nothing to detract from his handsomeness. His eyes were fiery and dark, capable of showing the great passion that lay in his Indian soul, or of showing intense hatred when he was angry and vengeful.

  “I agree,” she shouted back. “We’ll be drenched any minute!” She watched as, with agility, he guided his horse down an escarpment. He used an Indian saddle, a leather pad stuffed with buffalo hair. It provided a small, flat seat, not the large, horned, leather saddle most white men used and which made it easier to stay on a horse. Zeke sat the big Appaloosa as though he knew exactly how the animal was going to move, ready for every thrust of hoof and twitch of flank. Zeke knew horses, raised them and traded them. That was how he made his living, along with doing some occasional scouting. But there would probably be no scouting for him now. He was married. He would not want to leave her.

  He looked up to make sure Abbie was having no trouble getting down the same rocky pathway; for the descent was steep, and loose gravel skipped and bounced ahead of her as her horse’s hooves slid slightly. She hung on tightly as Zeke headed back up toward her.

  “I’m all right,” she called out. He came closer and grasped the bridle of her horse, and their eyes held for a moment.

  “I don’t aim to lose
another wife, especially when I’ve only had her with me for a couple of weeks,” he answered. “Fact is, Abbie girl, there’s more than one reason I’d like to find a cave to hole up in.”

  He flashed his handsome smile, a rare sight on Cheyenne Zeke, and Abbie felt the color rising to her cheeks. She wondered if this man would ever stop making her blush. Perhaps when she grew into more of a woman she would be able to control her emotions better. She smiled and dropped her eyes, and the man, who looked all Indian but spoke with the accent of a Tennessee-bred boy, carefully led her horse down the narrow pathway.

  Abbie again felt a flutter in her young heart at the memory of his return for her that spring. He had left her at Fort Bridger the year before because of a severe arrow wound she had suffered when Crow Indians had attacked her wagon train. Zeke had removed the arrow himself and saved her life when she developed an infection from the wound. But the gravity of the wound, combined with the personal loss of her family and the hardships of the journey, had left Abbie too weak to go on to Oregon. Zeke had been forced to leave his new young wife at Fort Bridger while he guided the survivors of the wagon train to its destination. By then, winter hit the Rockies in full force, and Zeke had been obliged to wait until spring to return for her.

  The mountain men who stayed at the fort and watched over Abbie had been good to her, showing nothing but respect for Cheyenne Zeke’s woman; for those same men had hunted and trapped with Zeke and respected the half-breed. But it was a long, cold, lonely winter for Abbie because she feared in one small corner of her heart that Zeke would not come back for her after all.

  Then one warm spring day he was there! She saw him coming, his sleek frame set against the background of red rock and grand mountains, a part of the land and its wildness. He had come back; she belonged to him. And now she had nearly forgotten what it was like to be afraid. Cheyenne Zeke had promised her she would never have to be afraid again.

  Abbie snuggled closer to her husband as the rain poured down outside the cave, its splashing and dancing enhanced by a waterfall near the entrance. The fall’s flowing water music mixed with the steady beat of raindrops and made it difficult to tell if it was still raining without looking at the cave entrance to see. But Abbie did not care to look right now. A small fire flickered nearby to burn away the dampness of the cave, and she curled up, marveling at how soft and comfortable a buffalo robe could be, but knowing the best warmth came from two naked bodies lying close together.

  Zeke sighed in his sleep and moved one leg over her. Only Abbie understood that beneath all the hardness and ferocity of this man lay an almost boyish need to be loved and wanted. He had known little of either in his young life. After being dragged by his white father from his Cheyenne mother and taken to Tennessee when he was only four years old, he had grown up in Tennessee, treated as something less than an animal. But his Indian blood had entrenched an inner pride in his heart that made him know he was much better than that—much better, even, than the people who looked down on him. He might even have been accepted eventually, if he had not made the grave mistake of falling in love with a white girl.

  Some of her own people—men she knew—had raped, mutilated, and murdered Zeke’s first wife, and they had killed his tiny son. They had done it just because she “deserved” it for sleeping with a half-breed. But eventually those who had done that came to regret it, for each one met a violent death at the hands of Cheyenne Zeke, a man who knew how to prolong final death until his captive begged for it. For Zeke was half Indian, and the tribe whose blood he bore knew about those things.

  That had been six years ago. Since then, when not wandering the western hills or trading horses or scouting, Zeke had dwelled with the Cheyenne, his mother’s people. He dared not return to Tennessee, for he was a wanted man there. He had left behind his white father, his stepmother, and three white half brothers, all of whom he would likely never see again. The only thing of beauty he had salvaged from Tennessee was his music—the mandolin and his songs of the Smoky Mountains.

  Now the Rockies were the only mountains he would know, and the only ones she would know. She shivered at the renewed realization of where she and Zeke were headed, to find his mother’s camp and his Cheyenne half brothers. She wondered if she had been a little too confident when she’d told him she could live with the Cheyenne. She knew nothing about them. It was not that she was afraid of them, for Zeke had assured her his people would never bring her harm. But she feared they would not really accept her or that she would somehow make a fool of herself in front of them and they would laugh at her. Perhaps Zeke’s mother would be displeased that he did not marry a Cheyenne girl.

  Abbie shuddered slightly, pushed her face against Zeke’s chest, and then felt his lips brush her hair. She knew her sudden trembling had awakened him.

  “What’s wrong, Abbie girl?” he asked quietly.

  She ran her hands over the hard muscles of his arm and kissed the bare skin of his chest. “Nothing,” she whispered.

  He pulled back a little to study her eyes. “No lies, remember? You know I can see right through those pretty brown eyes, Abbie.”

  She blinked back tears. “Oh, Zeke, what if they don’t like me!”

  “Who? My people?”

  She nodded and he grinned, pulling her close again. “I have no doubt in my mind that they’ll like you, Abbie girl. Oh, some will have to get used to the idea, and some will test you out. But mostly they’ll tease you. The Cheyenne have a wonderful sense of humor, Abbie. They like to play jokes and have a good laugh. But they’ll know you’ve lived differently—that you have to learn.” He petted her hair and kissed it again. “And we don’t have to go trekking all over creation with them, you know. We can build us a cabin on the Arkansas, maybe near Bent’s Fort.”

  “I think I’d like to stay with them, at least try it for a while, Zeke. I’ve got no home, no people save you. And you have only the Cheyenne to call family. Wherever they go, we should go.”

  His lips moved down over her cheek, and she breathed in the sweet, earthy scent of him, the scent of man and power.

  “For such a little girl, you’re some woman, Mrs. Monroe,” he told her. His lips covered hers while one big hand moved over her small body, so very gently in spite of its callused skin hardened from a rugged life of open air and leather and the hard work of mere survival. He cupped one breast, moving his thumb over the small pink nipple and arousing it, and she felt the surging tingle that always flooded through her at his intimacy. His lips moved down over her throat to that breast, lingering there to lightly taste the sweet fruit it offered while his hand continued down over her flat belly to find its way to the soft moistness between her thighs.

  It seemed he had magical powers in those fingers—powers that made her weak and submissive. She soon forgot her fear of meeting his people, for she became lost in the man who hovered over her, wanting and needing that which is made more beautiful by love. She willingly allowed him to touch and taste and explore; it was his husbandly privilege, but the pleasure she derived from it left no need for objections.

  For some time he was lost in her. It was only during their lovemaking that Cheyenne Zeke was not in full control of his own being. A small, young white girl controlled him then, making him weak with desire. His love for Abbie was the only force that had power over him, and that power had compelled him to make her his woman even though all his good sense told him it was not a wise decision. For their marriage could bring her heartache. It could even bring her physical harm. How well he knew that! Yet he had to have her. And so he had made a pact with himself to protect her at all costs and to love her and be faithful to her. For she had made a great sacrifice in agreeing to marry a half-breed and turn her back on the much easier life she could have had if she had married one of her own kind. And so he would never leave her or betray her because this tiny girl who loved and trusted him so innocently, who had given over her virginity to him with such faith, was his whole world now. He had made his
choice, and he was glad of it.

  Her body seemed to be suddenly exploding, and she gasped. In her excitable youth this often happened. He could feel her sweet pulsing against his fingertips, and he knew she had reached her peak before he’d even gotten inside her. But that would not change her eagerness for intercourse. He smiled inwardly as he moved on top of her, pushing her legs apart with his knees and quickly entering her, filling her with his magnificent manliness and again marveling at the fact that he fit her at all.

  She felt even smaller as his broad, dark shoulders and long, lean body cast a huge, misty presence above her. What a wonderful thing this was! Why some women thought it a chore was beyond her comprehension. It was so natural and right and pleasurable. Instinctively she arched up to him over and over, in spite of the pain that sometimes brought her, for Zeke was a big man. Yet he seemed to know the right time to release himself—when consuming her any further might really hurt her. She cried out his name and heard a soft groan from his own lips as his life poured into her. He lowered himself and enveloped her in his arms then, his body moist with sweat, his breathing heavy. He stayed inside her for a moment and then moved off her but kept her tight against him. They both lay quietly for a few minutes, their love for one another spoken without words. Then he kissed her damp hair, rubbing a hand over her back, thinking to himself that he could practically count every rib.

  “You’ll never suffer like she did,” he told her with bitterness in his voice. “That’s why it’s best we stay with my people, Abbie girl. The whites just won’t understand.” He stroked her hair. “Oh, the few trappers and such that we’ll run across in the back country would treat you all right—most of them, anyway. But if we lived in a white settlement or someplace like Saint Louis or Independence, they’d hurt you, Abbie. Ridicule you. I won’t let that happen. You understand, don’t you?”